Will the Democratic Party Destroy Us All?

I used to be a Democrat -- for decades. Was it always this bad? Was I that blind?

Well, maybe. But the situation now is drastic. The United States of America has never been in worse shape -- foreign or domestic -- not since the Civil War anyway. We are en route to being a pathetic, powerless, overblown Greece, but unlike Greece there is no one who can bail us out. We’re too big. We’ll bring everyone else down with us -- those left anyway -- in an economic Samson Option.

Yet to the Democrats -- and their bizarrely compliant media -- it’s business as usual. According to such solons of big journalism as CNN’s John King, the Dems main aim is and should be retaking the Congress with the same methods they have used for years -- blocking spending cuts, accusing Republicans of excessive greed, and catering to unions and reactionary race-based interests groups.

Hello, Planet Earth. I understand power politics up to a point. In some ways it may even be useful. But this is ridiculous.

Why can’t these people wake up? Don’t they have children, grandchildren? Don’t they realize we are going broke? The evidence is everywhere -- from Michigan to Madrid. Keynesian economics -- the welfare state itself -- has become completely inoperative, morphed into a Ponzi scheme by an aging population.

You can pretend that’s not true. You can put your fingers in your ears and wait for it all to go away. You can recite the mantra about taxing the rich until you drop, blame Bush until he's a figment of our memory more distant than William Henry Harrison, or pledge your allegiance to Gaia while circling the globe in a solar-powered Lear jet. But the reality remains.

(By the way, if you taxed the rich at a hundred percent, it would only push back our bankruptcy from entitlement programs a year, possibly two.)

So what exactly is wrong with the Democratic Party and its constituents? I know change is difficult, that breaking with old ideas -- as the Maoists would say -- can be painful, and that few of us like to admit we were wrong, but do we have to wait for bread lines?

So what's the explanation? Why is it that, in these times, there is nothing less liberal than a "liberal," less progressive than a "progressive"? Why do they and their party adhere to an ideology so shopworn and stultified -- forget about tie-dyes and bell bottoms -- they should all be running around in jodhpurs and crinolines?